The Mindy Project. Review

Mindy Kaling's quirky, irreverent sitcom The Mindy Project is an homage to romance.

With charming and engaging exuberance, Kaling's post-Office effort embraces the complexities of millennial womanhood. When you hear Mindy Kaling's name, you probably think of The Office or Never Have I Ever, or maybe projects like Ocean's 8 or the upcoming Legally Blonde sequel. Her magnum accomplishment, however, is The Mindy Project, with its unique irreverence and cheeky daring.

Kaling created, produced, wrote and starred ,which gave her control over the world her characters inhabited. The Mindy Project takes place in New York City, especially in the OBGYN clinic where Dr. Mindy Lahiri (Kaling) works and socializes. Mindy is a hopeless romantic, and while she is successful at business, she is less so in love. She goes on what appears to be an endless stream of dates, with different degrees of success. Her coworkers include an English playboy-turned-Meryl Streep fan, a lesbian southern beauty and her racist brother, and a repentant criminal turned devoted nurse who crushed Mindy's birth control and sneaks it into her coffee when she forgets to take it.

The program received a lot of flak, notably for the casting of Mindy's love interests, but it overcame a lot to become a cult favorite. It takes a few episodes to find its footing in terms of plot and tone; several supporting characters are not written out but simply leave and are never referenced again; and a mid-series cancelation and subsequent network shift threw some spanners in the works. However, the primary cast's chemistry eventually lifts the program, making The Mindy Project more than the sum of its parts.

The Mindy Project may not be Mindy Kaling's most well-known project, but it deserves to be. The show is a love letter to the romantic comedy genre, which she is well-known to like.

Although Mindy is no feminist hero, there are a few terrific scenes in which she refuses to give up her dreams and objectives for anybody, including the man she loves. After their ideals clash, she decides to be a single mother and refuses to choose between parenthood and her job. She opens her own reproductive clinic and leads a campaign encouraging young women to freeze their eggs so that they can focus on their studies rather than their biological clock.